Saturday, January 24, 2015

NIETZSCHE: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Prologue & Aristotle’s Vision)

Friedrich Nietzsche is most famous for one short phrase: “God is
dead.” Besides that, what
else does he have to say? Flaubert
spoke by telling a story and Hume spoke through philosophy and reason. Nietzsche does both. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra he tells a
story with a philosophical flavor. Zarathustra
is an unusual man. He’s
what Nietzsche calls an “overman” or what we might call a super-man. Zarathustra’s not like us. He’s stronger than we are and smarter
too. He went up into the
mountains for ten years to meditate and then one morning he woke up and it
literally dawned on him: “I am weary of my wisdom.” What wisdom had he discovered after
many years of meditation? He
discovered that society’s values are worthless. The things people say they admire and
respect are worthless. Using
Zarathustra’s own words, what does he think of Happiness? “It is poverty and filth and wretched
contentment.” Reason? “It is poverty and filth and wretched
contentment.” Virtue? “…poverty and filth and wretched
contentment.”

Nietzsche knew this would not be a popular message. In the story he writes, “Behold, I
teach you the overman…” And
what was the result”? “When
Zarathustra (Nietzsche) had spoken thus… all the people laughed…” This was predictable. Before anyone had ever read the story
Nietzsche had already built in his response: “They do not understand me.” Why not? It may be because he’s just plain hard
to understand; the story is difficult. But
Nietzsche also suspected people wouldn’t want to hear what he had to say. And he was right. Most people like comfort; Zarathustra
(Nietzsche) has only contempt for bourgeois comfort: “We have invented happiness,
say the last men, and they blink. They
have left the regions where it is hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one’s neighbor and
rubs against him, for one needs warmth.” He thinks this need for neighbors and
warmth makes us weak; it keeps us from becoming super-men. We huddle together for comfort and
soon “Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same.”

What is an ordinary person supposed to
make of all this? As
Nietzsche says, “Dark is the night, dark are Zarathustra’s ways.” He’s right. What do we have in common with a
super-man who thinks happiness is only “poverty and filth and wretched
contentment?” Aristotle
agrees with Nietzsche that everybody wants to be happy. But he thinks everybody wants
happiness for a good reason: happiness is a good thing to have. Reason and virtue are also good things
to have. They’re not
poverty and filth, as Nietzsche says. Reason
and virtue are values that lead us out of poverty and filth. They help us to live better lives. To live better lives we don’t need to
go off to the mountains and meditate. We
need to settle down and live with our neighbors. This is not a weakness. It’s what human beings were made to do. A man who lives outside a social
network is either a beast or a god. Aristotle
thinks it’s beastly to live outside of society; Zarathustra thinks it’s
god-like. Since “God is
dead” Nietzsche thinks we need new super-men to become new gods and create new
values. “To lure many away
from the herd” is Nietzsche’s goal. For
Aristotle this is not good. Man
is a social being. At his
core Man is a political being, a creature whose natural habitat is the polis,
or city. Even Nietzsche
admits “companions I need, living ones.” What he objects to is the herd
mentality of values. He
wants to create new values and recruit new Zarathustras to join him. This message appeals to many college
students. That’s why
Aristotle says young people aren’t prepared to study politics. Building society is hard work and
needs the very values Nietzsche rejects.